The following album is a collection of selected student works in progress and completed. We always have a great time in the studio/classroom. At times, it feels like walking through mud ... but when we arrive we all celebrate , sometimes quietly, the challenges that we faced and moved confidently through.

June 2008

In fact, is it imperative to change the name of what it is that I do? Imperative because it is about change and changing the what and possibly the how ? Do I work ? Is it a prayer? What? A practice ? But then, a practice for what ?

I have always worked like crazy. Long hours. Difficult strategies for production. And I like that scenario. But even as I write this I realize that , THAT working process is akin to training-- but creativity is like training -- It is simultaneously exhausting and renewing. I can return to the things that function well for me . Materials , time , space in my head and heart to approach authentically the matter at hand. See. My whole way of thinking about making is about problem solving and resolution and back to problem solving. Is that bad if the work is for God? If art making is about problem solving and organizing of material, idea and process in a meaningful way than it is renewing. The work is work that is fulfilling as well as emptying --- not vacant emptying but creating a place for God--- who is already seeking a place with in the work.

That's the change. Empty and full. The process must lead to a renewing and releasing for it to be work.

June 2008

During the Fourth Week of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius I wrote this prayer.

God, set my heart ablaze with your word.

Open my heart to your love, to your creation , to your creativity.

I pray that I my bring your love and creativity to manifest within the world.

God of my desire, my beloved, grace my life with the courage to live your love into the world.

This was about a year or so ago, it still resonates. I still say this prayer. Prayer is a repeated beautiful practice which brings one closer , ever closer to God. It is not simply about about asking it is more about , maybe , gratitude and offering of oneself back to God whom is in turn reach out toward us.

June 2008

Drawing is such a bare bones act.This is where I want to be . It's mark making. Simple. Pure. I started by drawing circles. And really trying not to think about it and not to allow my mind to wonder but instead to stay in the moment. Stay present. Contemplate. Stay open to movements and grouping of the circles.

June 2008

Where to begin. I am in a position in the studio that I have no shows to prepare for; no openings with my name painted on the wall to attend. Do I feel bad about this ? Hardly! I am excited and nervous. By design I have no commitments on my agenda. My agenda is instead to recreate , reinvent my studio practice. I really have no idea what that means. I know, I know we as artists are supposed be constantly moving towards that gallery , that sale , that show --- I just had to stop and consider what I'm doing in the studio for hours on end.

For whom do I work ? Yes it is for the glory and manifestation of God's love. Yes. But how does that happen ? Do I make the same work and say that it is for God ? Is that authentic. Sort of. Because I have always felt the work in the studio was as renewing as God's love.

I am not sure what to do expect to simply go in and make. When I was at Cranbrook Tony Rosenthal came to the sculpture department to visit. He was a fragile, old man with arthritic hands. As we , the sculpture students, listened to him talk I was impressed by his dedication to the creative process. He told the story about when he was working and the phone stopped ringing and he was not being invited for shows or commissions.

Proudly and slowly he told how he, every night after dinner,made small paper models at his card table in his living room. This diligence opened him to the work he is now best known for, but that was not the end goal for Mr. Rosenthal. There was no end goal. He simply showed up and opened up. This is what I hope to do .

June 2008

Process. It is the steps toward an end goal and it is the circuitous route of the heart and the mind in discovering. Racing past process. Stepping over process. Pretending that I know. That I've been there. A smug attitude of "Show me something new." and " I've seen it all at this point ." and "I'm the one that got there; that lived there." Where ever "there" might become to be. I understand how I become this way. It's simple . It's comfortable . It's easy.

It is the boxer. I must step in and spar for the right to become messy, become layered again.It is a challenge to stumble, to allow myself to experience the "new" the undiscovered and not place a flag upon it ; colonizing the idea, the material, the feeling as my own.

Instead to enjoy it;to live into it's "it-ness". Process. I know that I resist and engage in process. Process is clumsy , imperfect. Process makes me feel "I should know this!" and at the same time it is the delicious opening of the heart and the mind and the soul to the thing being processed. The reward , if there is one , is deep and subtle and beautiful.

June 2008

John Dewey in Art as Experience talks about the artist/student as being given a wide range of of material, process and problem finding/problem solving situations. Absolutely. This is paramount in the child's experience as it is paramount in the artist's experience.

My question is then :When does the student become faced with themselves in the studio classroom where they are the trainer and boxer? And how does the teacher set up situations that bring the students into the ring "facing oneself" ?

After years of working in both workshop and classroom; public and private school environments I wonder if it is at all possible to answer these questions if one has not or does not engage in a rigorous studio practice. I don't imagine that I would ever not make work . And I feel it when I don't inhabit the studio for a while during the school year when it is frenetic,meeting filled and dizzying.

What do we teach the children when we don't allow them to struggle with materials , ideas and process ? What do we learn as artists ourselves when we rest with what seems beautiful instead of work to create what is beautiful?

June 2008

In the place I have in my home where I pray each morning, there is an image taped to the wall from Art in America of two boxers in a ring with the referee and the crowd leaning in,yelling their heads off. It is by George Bellows, and because I trimmed it from a magazine , I don't know the title. What is important to know is why I have this image in a place that I see each morning.

The first answer is ; it is about the internal struggle, the internal spiritual battle. More deeply, it is about the fight that is for my creative life each day . Creativity is in my access.This is not a reference to the romantic ideal of conjuring a creative ecstasis. That is for another entry. I want to talk about the fight with any number of opponents as an artist and art educator.

As an artist, I feel as though I am consistently on the threshold of understanding and knowledge about an idea , material or process. I would hope to always remain here; uneasy, unsteady and not knowing where the next turn is until I have taken it. The gloves go on in the studio when I become comfortable. The battle is then with conventions I have set up for myself that once were products of experimentation. In the studio, I become both trainer and boxer. My opponent is my ego. The battle is universal and so personal. It comes to the question for whom do I work? My work in the studio is for the manifestation creative glory of God. To do this I must step aside or at some points push myself aside.

The same sort of battle is in the studio classroom. The art practice within the studio classroom is much more about the students then it is ever about the teacher.The rounds of the match are counted by the ability to or not to step from in front of the students and follow more than I lead. Absolutely the children need direct guidance and instruction however they also need to hear their own voice within the material, the process, the idea. The only way I can see getting to this with the students is to have had a similar experience in the studio of discovering one's own own visual language. The similar experience also of sparing and sometimes pushing oneself from one's own way to knowledge and deeper understanding.